


Rendezvous

by pipistrelle



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Early Days, F/M, LITERALLY, Near Death Experiences, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-08 06:33:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21471604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipistrelle/pseuds/pipistrelle
Summary: A moment from the early days of Hawkeye and Black Widow’s career. Natasha meets an old — well, “friend” is probably the wrong word. But they have a good working relationship.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 2
Kudos: 32





	Rendezvous

“But I’ve a rendezvous with Death   
At midnight in some flaming town,   
When Spring trips north again this year,   
And I to my pledged word am true,    
I shall not fail that rendezvous.”

-Alan Seeger, “_I Have A Rendezvous With Death_”

* * *

Wind speed 18 kph out of the north-northeast, entrenched storm systems dumping heavy sleet over half of Eurasia, sky so low and leaden his neck keeps tingling with the certainty that it’s about fall and crush them all like ants. Visibility’s shit. Visibility is _ negative _. If Clint were the kind of sharpshooter who relied on his eyes, he would be totally fucked. 

But he isn’t. He can shoot a precision EMP arrowhead through a blizzard with enough force to punch through glass, drywall, and a raffia-work ornamental gravy boat into the fucking USB port of the three-billion-dollar stolen SHIELD supercomputer behind it. He’s three rooftops too far away to hear the screams, but he smirks as every light in the house flickers out. 

He is the best marksman in the world, and he knows that no enemy sniper could possibly return fire with enough aim to make a difference. He’s right about that, as it turns out.

Which is why the enemy just triggers two dozen pre-planted mines in the rooftops of half the neighborhood, including the building he’s perched on, and blows it out from under him.

—

The dark and the pain form words. They drop into his brain — or maybe onto his head — like glaciers, each one massive and implacably frozen and perfectly distinct. Like a row of tombstones, each one the size of a city he’s killed. But more unnerving than that: it’s as if the tombstones in the graveyard of lost loves, cracked and worn by the passage of centuries, open their cracks into jagged mouths and speak to him with the voice of the earth and the dead within it.

They say, OH. IT’S YOU.

That terrible knoll of a leaden bell is answered by a human voice, so sweet and rational that Clint is sure it must belong to an angel. “You won’t take him.”

THAT IS NOT YOUR DECISION.

“And it is yours?”

YOU KNOW I DO NOT DECIDE. I SIMPLY... ENACT.

“Bullshit.” 

A distinct feeling of familiarity creeps like a frightened animal into the back of Clint’s mind. Not that the dread voice is _ un_familiar — part of its dread comes from the fact that he knows it somewhere deep in the boarded-up basement of his soul, and knows he’s always known it, and has always known that someday it would call for him. But that’s not the same as the kind of recognition that comes from being sworn at in the same dulcet tones for years, in rage and fondness and exasperation and passion, in eight human languages and probably a few extraterrestrial ones. 

Clint isn’t aware of opening his eyes but the tableau is suddenly before him: on one side a cowl cut from the fabric of sheer night, on the other red hair like a flame, sleet and snow falling, and in the center a corpse so burned and battered that at first he barely recognizes it as his own. 

Natasha is crouched over him protectively. As though it could do any good. “You could leave here. You could just... vanish back to wherever you come from.”

I CANNOT. AND EVEN IF I COULD, IT WOULD NOT MATTER. I AM OMNIPRESENT.

“I could make you leave,” she says, in a tone of soft certainty that has put the fear of her into several world leaders and at least one metahuman.

Death — it has to be him, literally who else could it possibly be — is unconcerned. 

Seeing this, Natasha changes tactics. “Please. Do this for me. For Sao Paolo -- the hospital fire...You owe me.”

I DO NOT DEAL IN DEBTS, NATALIA.

“That’s not my name anymore,” she snaps.

NO?

“No. Natalia is gone. You should have come for her a long time ago.”

Death inclines his head a millimeter to one side. Somehow, against all logic, this produces an effect of puzzled bewilderment. Then he makes a show of patting down his robes, as though looking for a stray hourglass or pocketwatch. NO, I DO NOT THINK SO. I NEVER MISS AN APPOINTMENT. 

The corpse on the ground twitches and moans. Clint should probably be horrified, and in a lot of pain, but he finds with mild surprise that what he mostly feels is embarrassment, and pity for the poor bastard who lived in that broken-down wreck. Everything feels peculiarly muffled, like it used to when as a child he would crawl into an unguarded wagon and wrap himself in the gigantic engulfing folds of a deflated circus-tent.

Natasha rests a hand on the brow of his broken body, murmuring something to him in Russian that he doesn’t quite catch. Death watches her with every evidence of interest. HE IS IN TREMENDOUS PAIN, YOU KNOW. OR HE WOULD BE IF HE WERE CONSCIOUS. AND IF HE LIVES, THERE WILL BE MORE AHEAD. HE MIGHT NOT THANK YOU FOR PROLONGING IT.

“Nice try.” She strokes Clint’s cheek, a gesture far too intimate for their waking life. “But I don’t give a shit about his feelings.”

HUH. THAT IS NOT THE SORT OF THING I NORMALLY HEAR FROM DISTRAUGHT LOVERS.

Casually, as though she argues with cosmic powers every day, Natasha says, “Do I seem distraught to you?”

Death declines to answer this. Without apparently moving, Clint suddenly finds he can see the face under the grim cowl. Or, more accurately, he can see the gleaming white skull, totally void of any decaying remnants of mortality, with eyes of purest black pricked by distant stars. It looks amused.

Natasha’s lip curls. “Fine. What do you want? There must be something. A riddle -- or a game?”

NOT FOR YOU. YOU ARE ALREADY PLAYING YOUR GAME, YOU CANNOT PLAY HIS AS WELL. THAT IS AGAINST THE RULES.

“Fuck the rules.” She looks down at Clint, running her fingers through his hair. “A trade, then. A life for a life.”

That gives even Death pause. His head tilts to the side again, causing tectonic movements down his spine. YOU WOULD GIVE YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE?

“Is that the trade you will accept?”

Death considers for a moment. NO. I WAS JUST CURIOUS. I DID NOT EXPECT THIS FROM YOU, NATALIA. THIS… OVEREXCITEMENT. HE IS NOT WHAT IS USUALLY MEANT BY A VIRTUOUS MAN. WHY ARE YOU SO INVOLVED?

“Because he’s _ mine_.” Her lips purse specutively as a new line of attack occurs to her. “What would happen if I killed you?”

NOTHING YOU WOULD LIKE. AND ANYWAY, YOU CANNOT KILL ME. NOT IN THE WAY YOU MEAN.

“I’ve killed things meaner than you.”

I KNOW. I WAS THERE.

Her grin begins to resemble his. “You can choose. I’ve seen it. In Cairo... in Siberia. When I was lost…”

WHAT YOU SAW IN CAIRO WAS...AN OVERSIGHT. EVEN DEATH IS NOT ALWAYS PREPARED FOR THE INTERVENTION OF CAMELS. The cloak shifts uncomfortably, and with such weird angularity that it’s hard not to imagine the bare bones beneath it. AND SIBERIA...THAT WASN’T ME, YOU KNOW; IT WAS ALL QUANTUM. EVERYTHING IS, THESE DAYS. CAN’T TELL WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN UNTIL THE WAVEFORM COLLAPSES. NOT SIMPLE LIKE IT USED TO BE.

At that Natasha laughs outright. “Has it ever been simple?”

After a moment of consideration he replies, NO, I SUPPOSE NOT.

Deep in the heavy ebon folds of the grim cowl of Death, something goes _ ding_.

One bony hand scrabbles about in the area of the ribcage and withdraws a small egg timer. It’s black and sparkles like jet. WELL, IT HAS BEEN A PLEASURE AS ALWAYS, NATALIA. GOODBYE.

“You’re leaving?”

YES. THE WAVEFORM HAS COLLAPSED. A BUTTERFLY’S WINGS FLAPPING IN THE PHILIPPINES PRECIPITATED A CHAIN OF EVENTS THAT PREVENTED A DOWNDRAFT FROM SLOWING THE HELICOPTER CURRENTLY ON ITS WAY TO THIS LOCATION. IT WILL ARRIVE IN TIME AFTER ALL. I AM NEEDED ELSEWHERE.

Abruptly, he’s gone.

Less abruptly, Clint’s vision grays out and he wakes up tied again to a sack of meat and fluids that’s slowly going to pieces under the effects of excessive and mean-spirited blunt force trauma.

“Sentimental,” Natasha whispers. “The old fool.” At the same time her hand is clenched so tight on Clint’s shoulder that it numbs even the pain from his fractured forearm.

“Tasha,” he croaks.

“Shut up, Barton. Help’s almost here.”

“Tasha,” he says again. “Wha’ happened? Had a weird dream.”

“Hush,” she says, and her hand moves from his shoulder to his hair, stroking gently, warming him even through the snow.


End file.
